Hocus Pocus, published by Apogee Software (developed by Moonlight Software) in 1994 sees a "puny" dropout wizard setting on a quest to collect crystals which will make him powerful. On his way, Hocus is ignoring important information given to him by Terexin while defeating enemies and bosses so that Land of Lattice will become more safe to travel. By completing four tests, he will also be accepted into the Council of Wizards and marry Popopa, daughter of Terexin who leads the Council.

IsraeliRD completes the second of these tests in 13:48.61 minutes, while the player doesn't care about the enemies and get through a horde of them without taking a lot of damage. You can check the author's comments to learn more about his techniques.

Hocus Pocus, published by Apogee Software (developed by Moonlight Software) in 1994 sees a "puny" dropout wizard setting on a quest to collect crystals which will make him powerful. On his way, Hocus is ignoring important information given to him by Terexin while defeating enemies and bosses so that Land of Lattice will become more safe to travel. By completing four tests, he will also be accepted into the Council of Wizards and marry Popopa, daughter of Terexin who leads the Council.

IsraeliRD completes the first of these tests in 15:09.62 minutes, while the player doesn't care about the enemies and get through a horde of them without taking a lot of damage. You can check the author's comments to learn more about his techniques.

JRSR contains a savestate

Current location:
At the third crystal. Need to manipulate the skeletons, ghosts and bats to get either no damage or one damage. I managed to do one damage only but accidentally overwrote the save file. Lots of enemies to kill here.

Game Resources

Movement

Hocus moves horizontally at a speed of 8 pixels per frame, and falls at speeds of 16 pixels per frame (with a maximum of 32 pixels per frame). When jumping, it takes Hocus 9 frames to reach maximum height, and 9 frames to reach the ground. His vertical movement, in pixels, for those 9 frames are: 16, 8, 8, 8, 4, 4, 2, 2, 1. When falling, this order is in reverse.
Warp potions move Hocus at a constant speed of 8 pixels per frame horizontally and 16 pixels per frame vertically.
Elevators move at a constant speed of 8 pixels per frame vertically.

The game has priorities with regards as to what Hocus will do first:
- Shooting will always be executed first, regardless of any other button presses.
- Moving horizontally is second priority, followed by jumping.
- Looking up/down will be executed if arrow keys are held down for long enough. If Hocus is jumping or falling the up/down animation will not occur until Hocus lands and the screen focuses on him again.

While walking up/down the stairs, jumping has a lower priority (and hence occurs a bit later than the input).

Invicibility period

After getting hit by enemies or spikes (metal or ice), Hocus gets a temporary invincibility period that lasts for 20 frames. Lava and fire give a much shorter invincibility period. Hitting a boss will cause instant death.

Difficulty settings

There are three difficulty settings, which affects Hocus's health and damage every enemy can take.
In Easy, Hocus takes 4% damage and enemies take the least amount of damage. For exaple, eskimos take 3 shots to kill.
In Moderate, Hocus takes 12% damage and enemies take two more hits than in Easy.
In Hard, Hocus takes 16% damage and enemies take two more hits than in Moderate. Therefore, eskimos take 7 shots to kill.
Green potions restore 10% of your health.

Powerups

Hocus can obtain 3 powerups:
- Increased firepower (the immobile lightning bolt found in most levels) which increases by one the amount of shots you can have on the screen at the same time.
- Rapid fire (the white potion) which gives you up to 9 shots on the screen at the same time.
- Fireball Laser shots (the grey potion), which gives you 3 laser shots. These instantly kill any enemy they come in contact with but do not disappear, rather continue their travel until they're off-screen where they disappear.

Additional info on Laser shots

Bosses can be instantly killed by the Laser shots as well.
The Laser shots can stack, so if you collect three of these powerups you will have 9 laser shots in your inventory.
Laser shots act like regular shots when it comes to destroying blocks, so one laser shot = one block removed and both disappear.
If you collect the Laser shots and the rapid fire powerup then you will shoot the laser first until it's fully out of your inventory.

Enemies

Enemies have hitboxes and these differ per enemy. Some of the enemies have a large hitbox due to them having a tail, while some have a smaller one.
Some enemies have a variable hitbox, such as those with wings.
Some enemies can spit out fire, lightning bolts, shoot flowers, throw rocks downwards and other things while others just run or roll at you instead, and they are pretty fast. As such, enemy manipulation is important and more about it later.
It should be noted that you can collide with some enemies or their trajectories without actually taking damage, as the hitbox is smaller or off-center.

Glitches

Corner clipping

If you time your jump just right, you can hit the corner of blocks and push Hocus inside stairs or floors.
For example, if you move left and jump towards the end of a platform, you can turn Hocus to face right (and move right) right as he's about to land on the very corner of the last block. Hocus will look to the right, but instead of landing on the corner of the block, he will continue his momentum downwards and in the next frame he will be inside the block. The frame after that he will continue going through the block downwards to the right.
This however does not seem to work in most cases and needs to be tested on a per case basis.

Random Bonus Glitch

Due to reasons unknown the game randomly gives the player a random powerup.
The player can receive any of the following: a silver or gold keys or both, the rapid fire powerup or the triple laser shots.

Lava Floor Glitch

Hocus can step on the edge of lava floors without taking damage!
While falling down from a jump, you need to align Hocus on the edge of the lava floor and a regular floor. Two frames before you hit the lava floor, move Hocus towards the normal floor for 1 frame and then stop pressing that key. Hocus will now complete his fall onto the lava floor but be registered as being on the normal floor.
This was untested if it works on spike floors.

Luck manipulation

Enemies can be manipulated into moving to certain directions, including off-screen where they despawn, and to do certain actions such as running, rolling, shooting or none of these.
Disappearing blocks can be manipulated to instantly disappear or not disappear for some time.
Appearing blocks can be manipulated to when they would appear.
The number of times the "Yahoo" sound and the stars that appear at the end when finishing a level can be manipulated via shooting. This does not waste time as the time the game takes from taking the last crystal until fade out to the results screen is always the same.

Luck manipulation of those items can only be done via jumping, shooting, looking up/down and infrequently, moving.

Spawning enemies

It is possible to cause some enemies to spawn later than normal or not at all based on Hocus's position or what he does.
Enemy spawns appear to be trigger based. Some triggers are on the floor and trigger when you step on them, while some are vertical and trigger once you go through them.
Floor triggers sometimes take more than one frame to realise that Hocus is in them, so jumping right as Hocus lands will mean the enemy spawn does not trigger.
It should be mentioned that some floor triggers actually do trigger as soon as Hocus lands, but will not trigger if he lands on the edge of the platform. Perhaps they do not go through all the way?